- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Here they come...
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric Hughes wrote: H >Not quite. I met Peter Lewis at CFP-94. He has the official H >cyberspace beat, which was just created this year. Markoff reports H >on the same issues, but is not assigned to that beat. H > H > Markoff's pieces in the times show remarkable understanding of the H > issues, but Lewis's make it seem like he's never even logged in. H > H >I would suggest it would be more profitable to educate Mr. Lewis H >rather than to hold another's reputation over his head. H > H >Eric Lewis wasn't that hard to talk to at CFP'94. He used to write the Executive Computer column in the Sunday Times so I've followed his stuff for years. I didn't see any problems with his Anarchy in Cyberspace article on Monday. He was mostly talking about bad manners which exist on Internet and equally in the over-governed realms of the real world. Nothing new there. He is trying to interpret Cyberspace for the masses. His job is not to be inside talking out. Perhaps he could have talked about the problems potential regulators would face but that would be writing his article for him. DCF --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

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More Gilder pointers
by whitaker＠dpair.csd.sgi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There's also a good interview in May '94 *Upside* with Gilder. "Upside" bills itself as "The Business Magazine for the Technology Elite", and is not a bad deal even for the $4.95 cover price (its primary competitor seems to be the $14.95 *Red Herring*, another technology-sector business magazine aimed at investors). I'm reading his 1989 bestseller "Microcosm": pick it up if you can find it. It's excellent. Gilder is a rare economist. He doesn't simply put forth solid free market arguments. He doesn't simply jump on the technology bandwagon. He knows science, and tells a whopping good story. For instance: I hadn't known that Andrew Grove (Intel CEO) was Hungarian, and had escaped Communist rule by crawling through the mud into Austria. America is full of incredible success stories. "Fibersphere" is his latest, in which he makes his controversial "death of television" and "dark fiber" arguments. I've only read excerpts in other Forbes articles, but it looks worth picking up. -Russell --- Forwarded mail from norm(a)netcom.com (Norman Hardy) To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com There was a long article in April 11, 1994 Forbes: "AUCTIONING THE AIRWAYS", by George Gilder". It had a supprising amount of technical information about a new technology similar to spread spectrum. The article has a "too cheep to meter" flavor that I do not agree with but it does present some interesting information and ideas. It is about 43k bytes and is available via anonymous ftp at netcom.com:/pub/Silk/auction.txt --- End of forwarded mail from norm(a)netcom.com (Norman Hardy) -- Russell Earl Whitaker whitaker(a)csd.sgi.com Silicon Graphics Inc. Technical Assistance Center / Centre D'Assistance Technique / Tekunikaru Ashisutansu Sentaa Mountain View CA (415) 390-2250 ================================================================ #include <std_disclaimer.h>

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Re: Cypherpunks Goals: Bad debate drives out good debate
by Derek Upham 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Cypher version of Gresham's Law: bad posts drive out good posts. > (The same is being seen in talk.politics.crypto, with the neverending > Sternlight vs. Everybody Else dominating the traffic by a factor of > 20-to-1. Detweiler recently reappeared (as tmp(a)netcom.com) and is back > to debating _himself_ and answering his own delusional posts.) Let's face it: Usenet is inherently broken. There are two ways to filter for content: filter at the newsgroup source via moderators, or filter at the newsgroup destinations via killfiles. Moderating does seem to get rid of most of the cruft, but the moderators are required to read every post that comes through, and, worse, make judgements with some degree of impartiality (which is not always possible). On the other side, kill files are useful, but only to a certain degree. Blocking sertain key words in subjects doesn't help against topic drift; blocking Sternlight won't help you in the slightest when umpteen other people respond to his posts. The situation for most mailing lists is just as bad. Anyone can send a post to a mailing list, and there are usually no moderators to enforce content. A reader's only recourse is another kill file---and most mail killing facilities are pretty lousy when compared with their Usenet counterparts. The only thing mailing lists have going for them is that they tend to be less obvious than newsgroups. Harder to find. To fix them problem, then, we either have to either improve the kill files or improve the moderation. Personalized AI filters (see Moran's "The Long Run") will be spiffy when they arrive, but they're not going to be arriving any time soon. This leaves moderation. If we increase the number of moderators, we can reduce the load on each and take into account as many tastes as possible. In the best case, the moderators would consist of all the readers of the newsgroup. How would this work? Assume we're running a mailing list (Usenet v.2.0 will be just a special case of a mailing list). All posts are sent to the central site. The mailing list software picks one e-mail address from all of the list receivers, and forwards the post to that e-mail address (keeping the original post on file). The forwarded post will have a subject line something like: Subject: Post ACK, list cypherpunks, msg #435A77CF with the post contained in the body. The receiver reads the post, then replies to it. The reply subject line will be: Subject: Re: Post ACK, list cypherpunks, msg #435A77CF and the body will contain "ACK" or "NAK" or "post" or "dump" or whatever. This goes back to the list maintainer, who can check that: * The message in question is in fact outstanding. * The person who sent back the evaluation was the one who was supposed to. * Other sordid details. If the message was approved, it goes to everyone. Otherwise, the original poster is informed that the post did not meet standards. We might even want to forward the evaluation body to the original poster; this would allow the evalutors to send comments explaining why the post was rejected. The nice thing about this technique is that the more people a person pisses off, the less likely it is that his or her posts will ever see the light of day. Even better, aware readers can nip MAKE.MONEY.FAST and Green Card Lottery posts in the bud. Something very similar to this exists now in the Internet Oracle, so distributed moderation ought to be possible. I suspect that the mail- handling features could be incorporated entirely into "procmail" and "SmartList" (a filter program and a mailing list program), although the databases would need C maintenance programs for efficiency. I'll go to bed and await comments. Derek

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Re: Cypherpunks Goals: Bad debate drives out good debate
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You have a good summary of what's going on. Personally I've found it useful to create a filter for my cypherpunks mail to send posts from people whom I respect more into a seperate folder such that the signal-to-noise ratio in that folder is higher. When I have more time I read the folder with the lower signal-to-noise ratio, but I often do not have those resources. I don't really have to deal with bad posts because I don't see most of them unless I have some extra time on my hands... Others interested in rational discussion and debate and actual-doing-things might find this a useful technique. Ditto. Actually I gateway c'punks straight into a local 'mail.cypherpunks' group, with the hack script below (there might be an easier way, but I had the code around anyway). First, I created a user called 'cypher', then gave it this .forward: suilven% cd ~cypher suilven% cat .forward "|mail2news mail.cypherpunks cypherpunks(a)toad.com" Since I'm running the smrsh security wrappers, mail2news has to be in the special smrsh directory, /usr/adm/sm.bin. mail2news: #!/usr/contrib/bin/taintperl # # mail2news - Incredibly simple program to take a mail message from # stdin and insert it into a moderated newsgroup so you can # read mailing list messages via news instead of mail. # # Usage: mail2news <newsgroup> <reply-gateway> # # Author: Stephen Hebditch <steveh(a)orbital.demon.co.uk> # # Operation: # 1. Create a new local group (e.g. orbital.lists.uri) with moderated # status to contain the local messages. # 2. Make sure the newsgroup isn't going to propagate outside your # system. # 3. Modify mailpaths (C News) or moderators (INN) so that your local # replies get sent back to the mailing list. # 4. Use a mail filter program (such as comes with elm) to divert # messages arriving from the list to this program instead. # # Add local config info here # Make secure (from 'perl' man page) $ENV{'PATH'} = '/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin'; $ENV{'IFS'} = '' if $ENV{'IFS'} ne ''; $path = $ENV{'PATH'}; # Not tainted $domain = "suilven.an-teallach.com"; $rnews = "/bin/rnews"; $update = "/usr/local/bin/op updatetrn"; $user = "news"; # If badly installed, news will get the replies $newsgroup = $ARGV[0]; if (!$newsgroup) { die ("No newsgroup name supplied\n"); } $replyaddr = $ARGV[1]; if (!$replyaddr) { $replyaddr = $user; } $body = 0; $kill = 0; $subject = 0; open (NEWS, "|$rnews") || die ("Can't run $rnews: $!\n"); print (NEWS "Newsgroups: $newsgroup\nPath: $domain!not-for-mail\n"); print (NEWS "Followup-To: poster\nReply-To: $replyaddr\n"); while (<STDIN>) { chop; if (!$body) { if (/^Subject:\s+(.*)$/io) { if ($1 ne "") { $subject++; print (NEWS "$_\n"); } } # Add here any headers you wish to kill elsif (/^(Received|Return-Path|X400-Received|Newsgroups|Path|To|Reply-To):/io) { $kill++; } elsif (/^From\s.*$/io) { } elsif ((/^\s.*$/io) && ($kill)) { } elsif ($_ eq "") { $body++; if (!$subject) { print (NEWS "Subject: <no subject>\n") } print (NEWS "Approved: news@$domain\n\n"); } else { $kill = 0; print (NEWS "$_\n"); } } else { print (NEWS "$_\n"); } } close (NEWS); system($update); exit (0);

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No Subject
by mlshew＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Version 0.1--This will change in case of conflicts, etc. I'll post V1.0 on Wednesday 5/18/94. This is version 0.1 of this file. For the most recent version, try the following: o finger mlshew(a)netcom.com, to read my .plan. (This file.) o get "plan" by ftp in netcom.com:/pub/mlshew This was originally sent to the cypherpunks and extropians lists. If you would like to meet informally with other readers of these lists during next week's COMDEX, I would suggest meeting Tuesday (5/24/94) at noon, directly above the food court in CNN Center--------->+ | | Map: (Badly out of scale and oversimplified to make sense | for walkers but not drivers) | | | | | | | -------------------+ +---------------------------------|-------------- Marietta Street | -------------------+ +---------------------------------|-------------- | | | +----------------+ | | +----------+ +-------V-----------+ | World Congress | | | | The Omni | | CNN Center | | Center (COMDEX)| | | +----------+ | (Food Court here) | | Walk this way like the rest of the mobs of people | +----------------+ | | +-------------------+ | Inter- | +--------------------+ |national| | MARTA Rail Station| | Blvd. | | (The local subway) | | | +--------------------+ | | | | Lots of very expensive parking here for those | | who want to drive directly to COMDEX in the | | middle of incredible traffic and raise their More Parking | | blood pressure instead of taking a shuttle from | | their hotel, or parking at a free-parking MARTA | | lot and taking MARTA in, as is the sensible | | way to go about it. (For those who haven't been to an Atlanta COMDEX before, the CNN food court is a place where almost every COMDEX attendee is likely to eat at least once during the week. If you happen to forget, loose, or never receive the ASCII map originally above this paragraph, any random person you might ask for directions can probably point you in the direction of the "CNN Center food court.") The court is in the center of the floor you will (likely) come in on. So don't go getting confused when you see smaller sets of restaurants and tables and chairs as you enter. That's not the central court. You won't miss it, just keep going in. (Of course, you won't have much choice in the matter: There will be a mob of hungry Comdex attendies behind you, and stopping in their path is simply not a viable option.) Go to the food court, and look up. You will see a single pedestrian walkway one floor above you. That is where we'll all be. Take yourself and your food up one floor, and enjoy the pleasant conversation. (Note that up on the walkway there's no place to put your food, but that's okay, because there's no place down in the food court either--it's _really_ crowded. Down there there's hardly a place to stand, much less sit, but go up one floor, and it's a virtual dessert.) I'd like to make a publicly available list that includes the following. (To be appended to this file.) o Persons coming to Spring Comdex, interested in attending a meeting such as this, and wishing to let that and related information be known to the world. o Whether they can make the noon Tuesday meeting. o Where they heard this announcement. o Good/bad days and times. Be specific but brief. Please include this in any event, so if 3 people say only Wednesday, and 7 don't bother to mention that Wednesday is impossible for them, that I don't switch to Wednesday. No guarantees of course. o Personal interests. (Explained below) o Misc. other information they want known to the world. If you would like to enter or modify yourself in such a database, modify and mail a form such as one at the end of this file to mlshew(a)netcom.com, with this subject line or "comdex meeting info". Feel free to also add in: o Any job openings you know about. (Esp. EE/DSP/Programming) :-) If you would like to tell me and everyone to expect one more person, just mail the form with a number "1" in the "Name" column, so you needn't broadcast your name. If you'd like to tell no one anything and just show up, that's okay too. I'll append the information (edited!) to the end of this file. As to why I included a field about interests, it will allow everyone to mull over everyone else's idea of what would be nice to talk about, the theory being that it might help conversation naturally bend towards topics all are interested in. As to the other information, it's also to help other people who might want to get together to do so if they don't want to go to this meeting. (Or to remember remember to bring that book they borrowed from another person three years ago.) It is not a "vote" on what time the get-together will be. Appended are two sample forms (since this is the first version: V0.1). Delete everything else, put in your own info, and mail it back to me. See you soon! Mark Shewmaker mlshew(a)netcom.com Noon Tue. OK? Name Where heard Can Schedule at Interests ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Y Mark Shewmaker extropians Flexible all days Schelling points of mlshew(a)netcom.com cypherpunks lunch meetings near conventions Thinks this is a great place to meet, and a nice place to watch everyone come and go. Need an employee? Apply now before prices go up. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- N One fake anonymous never tell MWF 10-2 Mental Cryptography person just as an example I just kind of feel silly telling everyone that I'm going to be there; I look forward to meeting you there, though. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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KEYSERVER UPGRADE ANNOUNCEMENT
by pgpkeys＠wasabi.io.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The keyserver at wasabi.io.com has been upgraded to cover the new format of pgp2.5 output and its 8 character Key IDs. It will continue to serve keys requested by 6 character ID for a short while, but the 6 character key database will not be refreshed with new keys. After a week or two we will remove the old data and all requests must be for 8 character Key IDs. If you have a reference to your key at wasabi in your .signature, please find the longer form of your key ID and update your sig file. Thank you. The Mgt.

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NSA & State Fears ITAR Lawsuits
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With the talk about Phil Karn's latest encounter with the ITAR (International Trafficking in Arms Regulations) issue over Schneier's source code diskette, I thought I'd pass on an interesting comment I heard recently. Someone who's had dealings with the NSA and State over these issues saw some memos, but was not allowed to make copies of them, which indicated that State's lawyer's were very concerned that an ITAR case involving software *not* ever reach the courts, because they felt the government's case was very weak and that a probable loss would be a serious setback in other areas. Make of this what you wish, but I should note that Jim Bidzos or someone like him (I just don't remember whom) at the 2nd RSA Conference, January 1993, said something very similar to this. Namely, that the government has generally avoided ITAR cases involving written material and similar material because of the shaky Constitutional basis. (Shipping a few packing crates full of mag tapes of weapons designs, nuclear secrets, etc., would probably be prosecuted, but shipping a couple of diskettes of C code, based on and essentially identical (no matter what the letter to Phil K. says) to the code published in a freely available book, sounds like precisely the kind of ITAR case the governments fears the most.) Note however, that I am not prepared to make myself a test case here! Anybody who does so, should, in my opionion, be "judgement proof" (to use Duncan Frissell's term). (Suing the government is less dangerous, but probably pointless....and maybe not even possible. A "test case" would probably involved someone very publically and very in-your-facedly exporting the diskettes and then awaiting an ITAR prosecution. Which might never come...no precedent would be established, the ITAR laws would not be changed.) Just my opinion here, but I'm not sure this case is central to the real issues. I applaud Phil for trying to get the diskettes ruled exportable, but fighting a long legal battle is not necessarily a high priority, as I see things. (Usual caveats about people doing whatever they want to do, about Cypherpunks not being an organized group and hence can't have official projects, blah blah.) Good luck! --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Cypherpunks Goals: Bad debate drives out good debate
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(I sent this out on Saturday, apparently just after the Great Outage began. I never saw it, so I presume few if any of the rest of you did either. While we're only 200-strong now, down from our 700+ peak recently, I suppose the most diligent and interested readers have by now managed to get back on the list. The alternately clued readers will have to miss this one.) Cypherdenizens, I guess it's a fact of cyberspace that well-reasoned, well-written posts don't get the followup responses that clueless, inflammatory, or otherwise controversial posts do. This has been driven home to me recently as I sort many thousands of posts and many hundreds of threads accumulated these last 19 months (and I deleted some of the true crap long ago, so my sample is skewed toward the good stuff!). I look at recent examples, like the analysis by Greg Broiles of what "Cyperpunks write code" means, and I see no follow-ups. I look at the thoughtful words of Harry Bartholomew, including a book review, of what can go wrong in software and what this means for crypto protocol tools, and I see no follow-up commnents. I look at Ray Cromwell's detailed presentation of his WEB-based remailer, and I see only comments by a few of us (me, Hal Finney, as I recall). Plenty of similar examples. What is going on? Without getting into particulars, clueless posts generate flurries of denunciations, "your mother codes in Fortran" insults, and alien abduction responses. A nobody name Nabalandian drools all over the list, mailbombs us, and generates several dozen responses. (Including from me, so I'm not blameless.) The Detweiler Perversion nearly brought the list to its knees for over two months recently. (And lesser flame wars, involving Thomas Tso, Xenon, and now Nabalandian, have similarly distracted us.) Cypher version of Gresham's Law: bad posts drive out good posts. (The same is being seen in talk.politics.crypto, with the neverending Sternlight vs. Everybody Else dominating the traffic by a factor of 20-to-1. Detweiler recently reappeared (as tmp(a)netcom.com) and is back to debating _himself_ and answering his own delusional posts.) Some fine work is being done, both by those who are posting here and by those who are apparently holding their counsel for the time being. But the crumb bum posts are definitely winning out. To be sure, posts by the stronger posters--who I won't name now--can still generate significant debate, but not nearly as well as the inflammatory posts can. (Part of this is predictable: the stronger posts are often technically deeper, meaning that more of the reading population feels unable to add signicantly.) I hope there's something we can do about it. I may start reposting, at not too frequent intervals, interesting articles from the past. "Golden Oldies," I called them on the Extropians list. Newcomers to the list often publically speculate that the old-timers are not "interested" in debating what drew them, the newcomers, to the list in the first place....things like Clipper, PGP, the loss of privacy, etc. What they may not realize is that many of us have spent literally many hundreds of hours writing articles for this list. That we have no wish to repeat the widely-accepted reasons for why Clipper is bad, or why RSA has not been broken, or why income taxes are about to become obsolete, is not surprising. While I'm not predicting the imminent death of the Cypherpunks list, it seems clear we have to stop the slide into inconsequential chatter and paranoid speculation. Cypherpunks write code. Or at least they work on ways to *make things happen*. They don't fall into the trap both the Marxists and the Libertarians have fallen into, of idly discussing theory and hoping that somehow the glorious future will arrive. Cyperpunks understand that the genie of strong crypto is out of the bottle and that a relatively small number of people working on new tools and capabilities can produce a phase shift of immense proportions in the world. There's work to be done, and I know of no other groups even one tenth as prepared as we are to do this work. Let us get on with it. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway." .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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So what do you think...
by lile＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

about this letter? Would you sign it? -lile ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lile Elam | "Remember... No matter where you go, there you are." lile(a)netcom.com | Un*x Admin / Artist | Buckaroo Banzai ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 11 May 1994 12:37:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Michael Ward <mike(a)Essential.ORG> To: niiregional-l(a)rain.org Subject: Letter to NSF re: Internet Pricing Distributed to TAP-INFO, a free Internet Distribution List (subscription requests to listserver(a)essential.org) TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE May 7, 1994 - Request for signatures for a letter to NSF opposing metered pricing of Internet usage - Please repost this request freely The letter will be sent to Steve Wolff, the Director of Networking and Communications for NSF. The purpose of the letter is to express a number of user concerns about the future of Internet pricing. NSF recently announced that is awarding five key contracts to telephone companies to operate four Internet "Network Access Points" (NAPs), and an NSF funded very high speed backbone (vBNS). There have been a number of indications that the telephone companies operating the NAPs will seek permission from NSF to price NAPs services according to some measure of Internet usage. The vBNS is expected to act as a testbed for new Internet pricing and accounting schemes. The letter expresses the view that metered pricing of Internet usage should be avoided, and that NSF should ensure that the free flow of information through Internet listserves and file server sites is preserved and enhanced. jamie love, Taxpayer Assets Project (love(a)essential.org; but unable to answer mail until May 15). Until then, direct inquires to Michael Ward. If you are willing to sign the letter, send the following information to Mike Ward of the Taxpayer Assets Project (mike(a)essential.org, fax: 202/234-5176; voice: 202/387-8030; P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036): Names: ___________________________ Title: ___________________________ (Optional) Affiliation: ____________________________________ (for purposes of identification only) Address: ______________________________________ City; St, Zip ________________________________ Email Address: _____________________________________ Voice: __________________________________ for verification) the letter follows: Steve Wolff Director Division of Networking and Communications National Science Foundation 1800 G Street Washington, DC 20550 Dear Steve: It is our understanding that the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other federal agencies are developing a new architecture for the Internet that will utilize four new Network Access Points (NAPs), which have been described as the new "cloverleaves" for the Internet. You have indicated that NSF is awarding contracts for four NAPs, which will be operated by telephone companies (Pac Bell, S.F.; Ameritech, Chicago; Sprint, NY; and MFS, Washington, DC). We further understand that NSF has selected MCI to operate its new very high speed backbone (vBNS) facility. There is broad public interest in the outcome of the negotiations between NSF and the companies that will operate the NAPs and vBNS. We are writing to ask that NSF consider the following objectives in its negotiations with these five firms: PRICING. We are concerned about the future pricing systems for Internet access and usage. Many users pay fixed rates for Internet connections, often based upon the bandwidth of the connection, and do not pay for network usage, such as the transfer of data using email, ftp, Gopher or Mosaic. It has been widely reported on certain Internet discussion groups, such as com-priv, that the operators of the NAPs are contemplating a system of usage based pricing. We are very concerned about any movement toward usage based pricing on the Internet, and we are particularly concerned about the future of the Internet Listserves, which allow broad democratic discourse on a wide range of issues. We believe that the continued existence and enhancement of the Internet discussion groups and distribution lists is so important that any pricing scheme for the NAPs that would endanger or restrict their use should be rejected by the NSF. It is important for NSF to recognize that the Internet is more than a network for scientific researchers or commercial transactions. It represents the most important new effort to expand democracy into a wide range of human endeavors. The open communication and the free flow of information have made government and private organizations more accountable, and allowed citizens to organize and debate the widest range of matters. Federal policy should be directed at expanding public access to the Internet, and it should reject efforts to introduce pricing schemes for Internet usage that would mimic commercial telephone networks or expensive private network services such as MCI mail. To put this into perspective, NSF officials must consider how any pricing mechanisms will change the economics of hosting an Internet electronic mail discussion groups and distribution lists. Many of these discussion groups and lists are very large, such as Humanist, GIS-L, CNI-Copyright, PACS-L, CPSR-Announce or Com-Priv. It is not unusual for a popular Internet discussion group to have several thousand members, and send out more than 100,000 email messages per day. These discussion groups and distribution lists are the backbones of democratic discourse on the Internet, and it is doubtful that they would survive if metered pricing of electronic mail is introduced on the Internet. Usage based pricing would also introduce a wide range of problems regarding the use of ftp, gopher and mosaic servers, since it conceivable that the persons who provide "free" information on servers would be asked to pay the costs of "sending" data to persons who request data. This would vastly increase the costs of operating a server site, and would likely eliminate many sources of data now "published" for free. We are also concerned about the types of accounting mechanisms which may be developed or deployed to facilitate usage based pricing schemes., which raise a number of concerns about personal privacy. Few Internet users are anxious to see a new system of "surveillance" that will allow the government or private data vendors to monitor and track individual usage of Information obtained from Internet listserves or fileserves. ANTI-COMPETITIVE PRACTICES We are also concerned about the potential for anti- competitive behavior by the firms that operate the NAPs. Since 1991 there have been a number of criticisms of ANS pricing practices, and concerns about issues such as price discrimination or preferential treatment are likely to become more important as the firms operating the NAPs become competitors of firms that must connect to the NAPs. We are particularly concerned about the announcements by PAC-Bell and Ameritech that they will enter the retail market for Internet services, since both firms were selected by NSF to operate NAPs. It is essential that the contracts signed by NSF include the strongest possible measures to insure that the operators of the NAPs do not unfairly discriminate against unaffiliated companies. Recommendations: As the Internet moves from the realm of the research community to a more vital part of the nation's information infrastructure, the NSF must ensure that its decisions reflect the needs and values of a much larger community. 1. The NSF contracts with the NAPs operators will include clauses that determine how the NAP services will be priced. It is important that NSF disclose and receive comment on all pricing proposals before they become final. NSF should create an online discussion list to facilitate public dialog on the pricing proposals, and NSF should identify its criteria for selecting a particular pricing mechanism, addressing the issue of how the pricing system will impact the Internet's role in facilitating democratic debate. 2. NSF should create a consumer advisory board which would include a broad cross section of consumer interests, including independent network service providers (NSPs), publishers of Internet discussion groups and distribution lists, academic networks, librarians, citizen groups and individual users. This advisory board should review a number of policy questions related to the operation of the Internet, including questions such as the NAP pricing, NAP operator disclosure of financial, technical and operational data, systems of Internet accounting which are being tested on the vBNS and other topics. 3. NSF should solicit public comment, though an online discussion group, of the types of safeguards against anticompetitive behavior by the NAPs which should be addressed in the NSF/NAPs contracts, and on issues such as NAPs pricing and Internet accounting systems. --------------------------------------------------------------------- TAP-INFO is an Internet Distribution List provided by the Taxpayer Assets Project (TAP). TAP was founded by Ralph Nader to monitor the management of government property, including information systems and data, government funded R&D, spectrum allocation and other government assets. TAP-INFO reports on TAP activities relating to federal information policy. tap-info is archived at ftp.cpsr.org; gopher.cpsr.org and wais.cpsr.org Subscription requests to tap-info to listserver(a)essential.org with the message: subscribe tap-info your name --------------------------------------------------------------------- Taxpayer Assets Project; P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036 v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176; internet: tap(a)essential.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: *Here they come
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Lefty reports some really nasty political facts in *Here they come >about what constitutes sexual harassment. Would it be sexual harasse- >ment to put up signs saying "DEATH TO THE POLITICALLY CORRECT" OR >"DEATH TO STATISTS". Or, you could wear buttons or drop the phrases >casually in conversations. It would surely be protected speech by the >1st Amendment. In case pressure was brought against you, you could just >say "hey, I was only kidding." > I think that we should think past behavior that bothers us in certain >cases &, instead, think about the kinds of people who constantly >sanction this behavior. When these people realized that we morally >sanctioned their deaths, they would be less pushy. Or, at least, we >could help redefine "hostile environment" for them. I doubt that there's a court in the land, not even in California, that would view the phrases "DEATH TO THE POLITICALLY CORRECT" or "DEATH TO STATISTS" as being sexual in nature. Beyond that, and I feel certain this will disappoint you, I haven't a clue as to what you're talking about. -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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